


Brother Mine (What have you become?)

by cloakoflevitation



Series: A Brother Is... [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Brotherly feels, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode: Putting Others First - Selfishness v. Selflessness Redux, Sympathetic Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, on god we gonna get you a hug bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23978002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloakoflevitation/pseuds/cloakoflevitation
Summary: Set post episode Putting Others First - Selfishness v. Selflessness Redux.Remus finds Roman. They fight. They hug. Remus cares about Roman and Roman cares about Remus, despite everything else. Idk folks, I just really needed some emotional/hurt comfort with Roman after watching the new video. The feelings are complicated here.***Warnings:Blood.Violence. When I say they fight, I mean I literally wrote a fight scene. I don't really think it's very graphic, but I want to warn you all the same. Stay safe |-/
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: A Brother Is... [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728859
Comments: 28
Kudos: 197





	Brother Mine (What have you become?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosegoldroman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegoldroman/gifts).



> Y'all left comments on one of my other fics about the brothers, and I really appreciated them <3 <3 <3

The moment Roman stepped into the Imagination, he knew it had been a mistake. He had scarcely crossed over the doorway when he caught sight of Remus. The landscape around them melted into flat, barren fields, the color slowly leeching out of everything until they were surrounded by gray nothingness. Roman turned, trying to go back through the doorway, but the door was nowhere to be found. He heard an angry roar and turned just in time to see Remus running towards him, and stepped aside, avoiding the swing of Remus’s morning star. He summoned his katana and raised it defensively, eyeing Remus.

“I don’t have time for this,” Roman growled, desperately trying not to cry.

He had wanted to come into the Imagination and do something, _anything_ to drown out the squeezing, suffocating pain he felt. What he wanted was to hole up somewhere and never see the others again. The last person in the world he wanted to see right now was his brother. And in true Remus style, here he was.

Remus didn’t respond to Roman’s warning beyond baring his teeth and running back towards him again.

Roman dodged Remus’s attack. The momentum of his swing left him vulnerable, and Roman used the opening to graze Remus’s side. Remus cried out and stumbled back a step, glaring as if looks could kill.

“Leave me alone,” Roman tried again, hoping Remus would take the hint and slink back to wherever he had come from.

Remus shook his head, putting his hand to his side and then inspecting the blood on his fingers. He grinned and barked out a mean laugh. His response was simply, “No.”

And then Remus was coming for him again, but Roman missed the feint and suddenly searing pain was blossoming across his shoulder, spreading like fire down his arm and across his back. That would _definitely_ leave a bruise. He fell to a knee for a moment before forcing himself back to his feet, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.

When Roman looked up, Remus had retreated back a few paces, his eyes following Roman’s every movement. With sweaty palms, Roman tightened his grip, his katana now held only by his hand on his good arm. He circled closer, until he was close enough to be within range again, and made a few haphazard swings. They were all blocked by the shaft of the morning star.

Remus moved back, his gaze stuck on Roman’s shoulder now that they were both out of range again.

His katana felt heavy in his hands, and Roman desperately wanted to collapse on the ground, consequences be damned.

God, he was so tired.

Panic was simmering in the bottom of his lungs, slowly threatening to reach up his throat and smother him. With little other option, he threw his katana down, watching Remus to see what he would do.

Remus’s eyes widened momentarily, and then he grinned. He threw his morning star off to the side, sending it flying with more force than Roman thought strictly necessary. It landed on the ground with a horrible thud.

His shoulder _throbbed._ But instead of healing it, the work of a second of concentration, Roman left it alone. It hurt like the devil, but, in a grim helpless way, he was relieved to feel anything outside of the desperate soul-sucking anguish that was currently wiping all his other emotions out of existence. The physical pain helped numb the emotional, and it made Roman hate himself just a tiny infinitesimal bit less.

He ran at Remus, hoping to catch him off guard, hoping to put a stop to this here and now, hoping to do _anything_ right today. But Remus was watching and waiting and ready. He dodged Roman’s fist and grabbed him around the waist, picking him up only to slam him down into the ground.

Hazy blackness swam in Roman’s vision for a few long, excruciating moments. He blinked and Remus was standing over him, not with a victorious grin but with a grim somberness and pain in his eyes. If asked to give a reason, Roman would have said it was the bleeding gash from earlier.

 _“Again,”_ Remus demanded sharply.

Roman scrambled to his feet, summoning a dagger as he went. He threw it, halfway surprised when it stuck in Remus’s leg. For a moment, Remus stood still, eyes wide and blank. Then he slowly looked down, touching the hilt of the dagger for a split second before he yanked it out. It fell to the ground, slick with blood. Remus made a pained noise, his face contorting with agony.

Roman summoned a shield just in time to stop the throwing stars that Remus conjured and hurled at him. Relying more on past experience than any kind of conscious strategy, Roman dropped the shield and rushed Remus, conjuring a concrete block behind his brother’s legs so when he shoved him, he fell over backwards.

Remus spit out swears between groans and laid on the ground. His breathing was fast and shallow, and Roman knew his was the same; he felt the air burning the back of his throat. Roman stepped away, waiting, watching.

When Remus climbed to his feet, Roman noticed a significant amount of blood on the ground where he had been laying. His eyes traced Remus’s injuries, but it was impossible to see the blood between the black clothing and all the gaudy ruffles and sequins sewn on.

Roman gingerly touched his bad shoulder and winced. “Enough.”

“It’s never enough,” Remus bit back, ominous and dark, and it made Roman hate him just a little more.

_I’m nothing like him._

“Again.”

Rage burned in his chest and so Roman obliged. He pulled his hand back, summoning a bō as he swung, intending to knock Remus off his feet once more. Having apparently anticipated that, Remus jumped back, summoning his own bō in response. Roman just barely brought his up in time to block Remus’s attack. The impact of their bōs hitting each other seemed to echo unnaturally across the lifeless landscape surrounding them.

Roman blocked another attack before Remus caught him, hard, in the stomach. He doubled over, dropping his weapon and trying to decide if he was going to be sick or pass out. In the end, neither happened, but he let himself fall in an uncoordinated heap. He lay face down for a long time, unaware and uncaring of what Remus was doing. He was tense, he was hurt, he was _miserable._

When he finally rolled over onto his back, Remus croaked out a single word.

“Again.”

Roman silently thought every unspeakable curse he had ever heard in Remus’s general direction. Remus limped over and nudged him with his foot. Roman groaned and instinctively curled away.

“Get up.”

Roman didn’t move. There was shuffling, and Remus was in his field of vision, then Remus was pulling him to his feet and – _everything hurt._

Hissing in pain, Roman pulled away, stumbling a few feet before bracing his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. When he straightened up, there were two Remus’s that slowly faded back into only one. Remus held up a sword, and in a fit of pure spite, Roman summoned a crossbow and fired it.

Remus clutched the arrow now sticking out of his chest, just below his collarbone.

Roman sat down heavily, closing his eyes and resting his head on his knees. By now he knew it was only a matter of time until:

“Again.”

Remus summoned an axe. He waited until Roman got back on his feet before advancing. Roman summoned a shield that eventually grew too heavy for him to hold. When he finally dropped it, he wasn’t panicked. He wasn’t worried. He was numb. Maybe that was worse than panicking. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore.

When Remus threw the axe, the angle was wrong and Roman wasn’t struck by the blade on it. He should have been grateful. He should have been thankful for the luck or for the fact that Remus was too tired or too hurt or too something to aim well. Instead all he felt was the flowering pain of his shoulder, his stomach, his back, his _heart._

“Again.”

Remus summoned a scythe; Roman summoned a spear.

They both ended up bleeding on the ground.

“Again.”

Remus summoned a longbow; Roman summoned nothing. It didn’t matter. Remus still shot him anyway.

“Again.”

“I wish you could kill me,” Roman spat out bitterly, not bothering to move from where he was lying. “I wish sides could die.”

Remus crouched over Roman, leaning far too close to his face. He braced himself on his knees and a hand, the other arm pressed across Roman’s throat. Not pressing hard, but enough to feel it. “Do you?”

His vision went fuzzy again. His answer was a whisper, maybe from the arm at his throat, maybe from his exhaustion, maybe from the pain. _“Yes.”_

He thought Remus closed his eyes, but it was hard to tell. One moment he was barely swimming above the tide of throbbing pain and searing wounds, and the next he felt nothing. Which meant he felt everything he didn’t want to feel all over again. Without his injuries to dull it, his broken heart consumed him.

Remus had healed him, and Roman _hated_ him for it.

He felt weight on his legs, his stomach, his chest, and realized Remus had collapsed on top of him. He was tense and shaking, but after a minute, Remus relaxed. He sat back up, apparently not caring that he was heavy across Roman’s torso.

Fingers grazed his cheek, and all at once Roman realized he was _crying._ He hadn’t known, and he had no idea when he had started.

“I know,” Remus murmured softly, and there was _pity_ of all things, in his voice. “I know.”

“I hate you.”

Remus didn’t say anything about the way Roman’s voice cracked. He didn’t say anything about the tears rolling down Roman’s cheeks. He didn’t say anything about the way Roman reached up to grab onto him. “I hate you too.”

That made Roman cry even harder, and Remus let him press his face against his chest, let him cling to him like a dying man with a life preserver in the ocean. Remus’s hands came up to hold him, to pull him impossibly closer, and Roman thought he heard a quiet sad noise slip past his lips.

They were sitting up now, and Roman couldn’t remember moving, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All that mattered was the rise and fall of Remus’s chest beneath his cheek and the pressure of Remus’s hands on the back of his head and the small of his back.

Roman gathered fistfuls of Remus’s shirt in his hands and cried and cried. He cried until all he could feel was emptiness and swollen eyes and a scratchy throat.

“Remus,” he whispered hoarsely, with a desperation that he couldn’t explain. _“Remus.”_

“I know.” Remus hummed in a low soothing tone. “It’s okay. I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I am.”

Remus sighed. “I know.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t like you.”

That made Remus shake gently with laughter, but it sounded hollow and wrong. “I know.” He paused. Hesitated. Took a breath. “I don’t like you either.”

Roman didn’t have anything to say to that, so they were both quiet. The land was empty and desolate around them. Not even the wind blew. There was no sun, no color. Just an overcast sky with endless monotone nothingness stretching around them.

In the silence, Roman picked up the quiet thrum of a heartbeat. Maybe his own. Maybe Remus’s. Or maybe a mix of the two.

Remus started to move, and Roman held on tighter, but only for a moment. When he realized what he was doing, he immediately let go. Remus froze and blinked and then carefully pulled Roman back against him.

“Can we sit for a while more?”

Roman knew he was being treated like glass, like a baby, like the exact opposite of the way he always tried to present himself. Somehow, he didn’t care.

“A little while more,” Roman allowed.

And so they sat for a while more.

**Author's Note:**

> The new episode _ruined_ me (but in a good way asdklfjsd) and I am still recovering (and probably will never stop recovering).
> 
> I have several WIPs but the new episode made me really want to pen this. I wrote it all in one sitting (unlike my usual endless rounds of editing) so if you see a mistake, please let me know!
> 
> If you have any prompts/requests, please feel free to send them my way [@doctor-gloom](https://doctor-gloom.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


End file.
